You will be able to write a short cold email with a plain subject, a first line about them and one easy ask.
Open your own inbox and look at the last few emails from people trying to sell you something. Most have a subject line in title case with a promise in it. Most open with "I hope this email finds you well" and then spend three paragraphs on the sender's company. Most end with a calendar link and a choice of three time slots. You probably deleted them without reading past the first line.
Your prospects do the same. A cold email that gets a reply looks different from those, and it is usually much shorter. This lesson takes one apart into its four pieces.
Write a subject line that looks like a colleague typed it in a hurry. Short, lower case where natural, and about their situation. "New outlet in Tampines" or "question about month-end" or "Siti suggested I write".
Subject lines full of capitals, numbers and promises, such as "Save 10 Hours a Week on Bookkeeping", tend to get skipped, because they look like the newsletters and promotions people filter out every day. A plain subject looks like it might be from someone they know, or about something real, so it gets opened and read.
Keep it honest, though. "Re: our meeting" when there was no meeting will get an open and lose the reader's trust in the same second.
The first sentence shows in the preview on a phone, so it decides whether the rest gets read, and it has to be about the buyer.
You have three good options. A trigger from lesson 1.3: "Saw you're opening in Tampines next month." Something they said publicly: "Your post about juggling three outlets' rosters made me laugh, mostly in sympathy." Or a problem their peers commonly have, from your personas in lesson 1.2: "Most cafe founders I speak to say month-end eats a whole weekend once they pass two outlets."
What you leave out is just as important. No "I hope you're well", no "My name is Mei and I'm the founder of", no "I'm reaching out because". Those lines are about you, and they push the interesting sentence out of the preview.
Next, one or two sentences on what you do, described as a result for people like them, not as a list of services.
"I do the books for a handful of cafe groups with two to five outlets, so the founders get their numbers by the fifth of each month without doing it themselves." That tells the reader who you work with, which helps them place themselves, and what changes for those people. It does not mention software, packages or prices.
Notice that it is specific. "I help businesses with their accounting" could be anyone. "Cafe groups with two to five outlets" tells the buyer you know their world. If you have permission to name a similar client, that can help too, but only with permission.
End with one question that is easy to say yes to. "Worth a short call to see if it would help?" or "Is month-end a headache for you too, or have you got it sorted?"
Avoid the calendar link with three options at this stage. It asks the buyer to commit time to a stranger before they have decided they care, and it turns a light question into a scheduling task. Save the link for the reply where they say yes.
Stick to a single ask. An email that asks for a call and also invites them to download a guide and also offers a free review gives the buyer three decisions, and the easiest is to do none of them.
Here is Mei's full email to a founder she found through a job ad:
Subject: new outlet in Tampines
Hi Jason, saw you're hiring two outlet managers for the new Tampines branch, congratulations. Most founders I work with say month-end gets much harder once they pass three outlets. I do the books for a handful of cafe groups your size, so the founders get their numbers by the fifth of each month without doing it themselves. Worth a short call to see if that would help you too?
Mei
If it's not relevant, reply "no thanks" and I won't write again.
That is under a hundred words, and the last line tells Jason how to stop hearing from her. On a phone it fits on one screen without scrolling, which is a good test for any cold email: if the reader has to scroll, it is probably too long.
Before you send it, check two things from module 5. If the email address belongs to an individual and came from a list, lesson 5.2, PDPA basics for prospecting: consent, purpose and records, matters. And every message should say who you are and how to stop hearing from you, as Mei's last line does; lesson 5.4 builds that into a checklist.
Now write your own. The activity below asks for one email under 100 words for your main persona, using the four parts, and asks you to read it on your phone before you call it finished.
Write one cold email under 100 words for your main persona using the four-part shape, and read it on your phone to check length.
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